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Hickenlooper tops $3M in governor’s race

The Democrat running for Colorado governor broke the $3 million fundraising mark, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has collected $3.3 million after raising $360,000 over the past two weeks, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State’s Office by Monday’s midnight deadline.

That’s more than seven times as much as American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo has taken in, and 11 times more than Republican Dan Maes.

“Nine months ago we stood in front of the Capitol and said we would run a different kind of campaign if people would support us,” Hickenlooper said in a statement. “But even we could not have anticipated the momentum generated by our pledge to run a positive campaign focused on creating jobs and bringing a business sense to government.”

During the last two weeks of September, Tancredo pulled in about $149,000 compared to Maes’ $28,000. In the two months he’s been campaigning, Tancredo has raised nearly $467,000. Over the past 18 months since he’s been running, Maes has collected about a third less, $299,000.

Tancredo, a five-term GOP congressman from the Front Range, said he got into the race because he didn’t believe Maes was strong enough to take on Hickenlooper. As a result, Tancredo has repeatedly called on Maes to drop out, calling him the real third-party candidate.

But Maes told The Daily Sentinel on Monday that had Tancredo not left his own party to enter the race as a third-party contender, he would have collected those donations.

He points to a new Rasmussen poll as evidence.

That poll, released Monday, showed Hickenlooper with 43 percent of the vote, Tancredo with 35 percent and Maes at 16.

If the governor’s race were only a two-man contest, Maes would be leading with 51 percent, he said.

“I believe that (Tancredo) became very angry over the process that left him out in the cold, and the fact that a newcomer was winning,” Maes said. “He hates it that this guy came from nowhere when he bowed out. Everybody bowed out, and it didn’t work out their way. It’s a V-8 moment. They slapped themselves on the head and said ... ‘I could have had won this thing.’ This comes down to one man’s decision of saying, ‘I could have had it,’ and he made a last-ditch effort to take another shot.”